The Politics of Compromise

The ballots are counted and voters have been heard. But will the recent hard-fought election, replete with record spending and ever more divisive rhetoric, really change anything in Washington?

Penn's Annenberg School of Communication, Department of Political Science, and Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program hosted "Time to Deal: Reawakening the Spirit of Compromise in American Politics" on Tuesday, November 13 on campus. The panelists, who included Penn President Amy Gutmann, co-author of The Spirit of Compromise: How Governing Demands It and Campaigning Undermines It with Harvard Professor Dennis Thompson, addressed how we can best avoid short-term problems, such as the fiscal cliff, and work to come up with long-term solutions for the good of the country, even when political opponents disagree.